Late last year, president Obama signed a law that makes it possible to indefinitely detain terrorist suspects without any form of trial or due process. Peaceful protesters in Occupy movements all over the world have been labelled as terrorists by the authorities. Initiatives like SOPA promote diligent monitoring of communication channels. Thirty years ago, when Richard Stallman launched the GNU project, and during the three decades that followed, his sometimes extreme views and peculiar antics were ridiculed and disregarded as paranoia - but here we are, 2012, and his once paranoid what-ifs have become reality.

I disagree with the opinion that free software should be difficult to use in essence.

In my view, free software is about giving end users the right to learn about how their software works, with the explicit restriction that they must use this knowledge for the general advancement of humanity (i.e. redistribute any modified source). But this should always remain a right, not a duty.

See Mozilla Firefox : they manage to be at the same time one of the most user-friendly web browsers out there and one that gives its users the most power (through about:config and extensions). This is, in my opinion, what good free software should aim at.